Foh-Amoaning: Ghana has potential to win 2023 All Africa Games

Former Ghana Boxing Authority (GBA) president, Moses Foh-Amoaning, is hopeful Ghana will win a lot medals at the 20123 All Africa Games to be hosted in Ghana.

Last week, Ghana won the bid to host the 13th edition of the pan-African sporting festival to be held in three cities: Accra, Kumasi and Cape Coast.

The successful bid to host the continent’s biggest multi-sport festival has made the former boxing chief excited and he admits the Ghanaian authorities have put in a lot of work to prepare national teams and athletes well to come out tops at the games.

“Steps are already being taken here in Ghana to ensure that our athletes are well prepared for competitions. For example, the Bukom Fist of Fury [boxing league] is a foundation programme to ensure that Ghana wins about 11 or 12 medals in boxing,.

“I’m confident Ghana will win big in the boxing competition. The tournament [Bukom Fist of Fury] includes six to 10 juvenile bouts per fight nights and there are 26 fight nights in all. The amateur competition comprises 16 fights per night and when you multiply that by 26, you will see that there are over 400 fights every six months,” explained Mr Foh-Amoaning, who is the consultant for the boxing league.

“For a five-year competition, just do the calculation and see. They don’t come better than that. When it comes to the training of coaches, the government through the youth and sports module of the Youth and Employment Agency is training 5000 coaches in all sporting disciplines. That’s how you grow sports.”

According to Mr Foh-Amoaning, he believes that the performances recorded by Ghanaian teams and individuals on the international stage was suggestive that with a little more push, the athletes would perform well at the 2023 All Africa Games.

”If you look at the performance of the Black Satellites, Black Starlets, Black Queens and Black Maidens, I think the sky is the limit. I do not think we can miss out on the gold in men and women’s football.

“In arm-wrestling, we held the African championship here and won 81 medals, so in five years if we prepare well there’s no way we are not going top. We are doing well already in weightlifting, so we need to push.”

For the All Africa Games, he is calling on Ghanaian authorities to invest more in traditional disciplines such as football, athletics and boxing but to also include armwrestling, weightlifting, hockey and tennis, volleyball with potential to win laurels for the country.

The competition will serve as qualifiers for the various disciplines for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

Business News of Thursday, 21 March 2019
Source: thebftonline.com
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